Pants and Chickens

Let’s have a happy post today.

I taught the Free Range Slacks class at the store yesterday to three students. One had never made a garment before. Two were garment sewists, but one of them—with a fair bit of experience making pants—had never made pants with pockets because she was afraid of pockets.

We got started at 10 am. I always encourage students to try on the class samples because that helps narrow down what size they need to make. One student wore the same size I do, so I gave her my already-traced pattern and got her started on cutting. The other two needed to trace their patterns, so they did that first.

The class took all day and we were cleaning up as the store was closing, but each student had a finished pair of pants to show for her work. All of the pants fit. If it hadn’t been so hectic, I would have tried to get a photo.

That was the third time I’ve taught that pattern and it is probably my favorite class. The Free Range Slacks pattern teaches so many good skills. The students sewed. They serged. They understitched. They topstitched. They pressed. And the pattern lends itself well to lots of different fabrics. One student made hers in some Kaffe fabric. Another used a Fableism woven, which is a new line the store just brought in. The third student made a pair out of some green batik fabric from her stash. She was the one who was afraid of pockets, but left class saying she no longer feared them and that she was going to make several more pairs of pants from all the linen in her stash.

I took the Burnside Bibs with me so Sammy could try them on. I am going to make a couple of adjustments to the pattern and sew up the final pair from a Tula Pink wideback she’s been hoarding. This current version will be the store sample. The funny thing is that the store brought in the pattern so I could teach the bibs as a class, but I said I thought it was too advanced. At the very least, it would have to be a two-day class. However, two of the women in yesterday’s class saw the bibs and wanted to know when I was going to teach that pattern. It may be going on the schedule after all. (The bibs look darling on Sammy, by the way.)

The store is closed on Mondays, but I am going in tomorrow to teach the staff training, which will be my thread class. While I was there yesterday, I picked up a roll of Wonderfil Total Support embroidery stabilizer and a tube of Spotlite metallic thread. I want to try embroidering with this.

As an educator, I have a wholesale Wonderfil account, but they are in Canada so I try to order only when I need a lot of something. For one or two items, I just buy at the store.

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I only stuffed six of my 12 chickens this week. I was going to do the rest last night, but I was wiped out when I finally got home and had dinner.

I’ll take these to church this morning and stuff the remainder this week.